One spring had me moonlighting on crisis response. I was far from an expert. Only shadowed whoever was on-call, to learn what to do when there’s nothing to be done. Mostly, the work took you out into homes where the children who are wanting to harm themselves live. But one Friday night, the call was from a prison several counties away, near the Kentucky line. It took forever to get there, and, when we got near, you could not see a thing because that low valley had been drained of all light.

The prison wasn’t for everyone. Only if you got locked up before the age of eighteen. Like training wheels, to prepare you for the prisons they build for adults.

At the heart of the complex was a windowless room. It had bolted-down tables and the cheer of an emptied-out bottle of glue. Wide-body guards pressed themselves to the cinderblock, like bashful teens at a dance. A prison administrator came in, then went out. And then came in again. There was paperwork, but no one knew exactly which of it was necessary for this kind of case. Of course, the woman I shadowed and I had our usual documentation: cataloging the horror, making a safety plan, writing down at least five positive personal goals.

Finally, one of the guards went to bring back the cause of the problem. He came shuffling out of solitary confinement. Dressed in a pink paper gown that covered only his front. But it wasn’t the gown or the bare ass you noticed. What you saw was the wounds. What he’d done to himself. Gouged furrows of injury striping his legs. Arms like the ground beef that bleeds in its plastic. Any sharps, if it had a point at all, they had taken from him: pencils, forks, spoons, his toothbrush. They’d cut his fingernails, so he couldn’t use those on himself. But still, he kept on. Had spent the day chewing away the side of his lip, so it hung in a flap, giving a direct view on yellow teeth and sick gums. His lip hanging free slurred his speech, but you could tell somebody somewhere had taught him to say “sir” and “ma’am.”

They’d put him in solitary because the psychologist that morning had said, “suicide watch.” This psychologist was young, the prison administrator let us know. Prone to making things out to be more than they were. But, financially speaking, it just couldn’t go on. Suicide watch ties up your staff with the one-on-one coverage. It means you’re understaffed elsewhere, or you’re paying overtime. Surely, we understood.

In fact, it was why we were there. Crisis response could change things. Could override prior orders. Maybe somewhere, they could afford to do suicide watch. Maybe somewhere they had the money to give all the prisoners neck-rubs and footie pajamas. Maybe somewhere. Not here. Surely, we understood.

Of course, there was a story. When he was very young, someone had done horrible things to this boy, to his innocent body. After that, he’d been passed around, house to house, up there back in the mountains where his family was from. Now, what had been done to him, he had done to other small children’s bodies. The trial kept getting delayed for one thing or another, but there was no question. It was open-and-shut. This boy would not see the outside of a prison for as long as he lived.

After Jesus dies on the cross, and is laid in the tomb–but before Easter morning–he goes missing. Scripture is silent on exactly where to. But people began to say that, after his death, he must have gone straight to hell, to set free the captives. Maybe something like freeze-tag, Jesus tapping each person gently, saying, “You’re free now. Un-frozen.” But, arriving into that windowless room, with us all in a tableau of stone-faced despair, what could Jesus have done? Who among us could have been unfrozen? The prison administrator? The guards? The prisoner? The woman I shadowed and me, with our black ball-point pens and unfinished documentation? And what is it we’d do? Sing and dance? Clarify our positive personal goals? Open the gates and run free till the Sheriff caught up?

It may be too late here to say the word, “sin.” Well, whatever the word, listen: sometimes, it isn’t any one thing any person has done. Sometimes, it is the overall ruination. The unholy mess we have found ourselves in. Maybe it’s not an Easter story we’re wanting, of rising up from the wreckage. Maybe what’s needed is a clean break, a fresh start, maybe no less than Christmas.

So, here is a Christmas. It’s a starless dark night in a forgotten dark valley, and somehow, we have ended up huddled together in prison–the prison administrator, the psychologist, the guards, you, me, everyone. Not a prison of cinderblock. Stronger: made of suffering, and of the blindness to it, with walls so high and so distant, we cannot find the gate, and don’t always remember it is where we are. Our hearts are scabbed over. We live without hope. But on this night, the news comes: all of that is now over, the prison dissolved, like a change in the weather, and the world is made new. It is the strangest thing, and we cannot believe it. Here we are, shy in our love, in the presence of God. And here, Lord, is this child. He needs cleaning, a blanket, to be held, to be cherished. He has not yet been wounded, his flesh has not yet been torn, he is not yet in prison near the Kentucky line. Mortals that we are, we cannot promise our adoration will prove to be more than fleeting. But for this flickering instance, in the holy presence of the tender child we will one day betray, the doors of our hearts now are standing wide open, and we are amazed.

I was walking in City Park with a community organizer this week when suddenly we were only the width of the boardwalk away from a Great Egret, its fancy fringe plumes fluttering in the morning breeze. We paused, taking in the beauty, marveling at the unexpected joy of such a close encounter.

A few minutes later, on the other side of the lake path, I was startled by the sudden appearance of a pelican swooping in for breakfast. (With all due apologies to the fish), I clapped my hands in delight when I watched the pelican give the throaty head waggle that signifies success.

And I noticed, as our walk continued, that our conversation had transitioned as we were present to the beauty and wonder of where we were. A talk that had begun with the challenges and frustrations we were facing was giving way to some creative collaboration, some hope, some joy.

May you too find beauty in this world to give you hope and joy, to point the way towards collaboration, community, creative resistance to all that would tell us we are less than, not enough.

I confess it all seems a bit silly to me, this whole notion of there being a “war on Christmas” because some institutions are wishing people “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” Does it really matter? OK, I admit that I, personally, am annoyed with the signs that declare that Jesus is the Reason for the Season. The season, after all, is winter, which is caused by the fact that the earth rotates on a slightly tilted axis, which takes the Northern Hemisphere a little further from the sun this time of year. Jesus has nothing to do with it. Jesus also has nothing to do with a variety of holidays that take place in this season, such as Chanukah, Yule and Kwanzaa.

However, pagan symbolism such as fir trees, holly and mistletoe aside, Christmas is Christmas, and I have genuine sympathy for the people who are concerned that it is time to put the Christ back into Christmas. It seems a bit bizarre to me to celebrate the birth of a baby born in a stable by indulging in an orgy of consumerism. But how people conduct their celebrations is not the war.

No, the war on Christmas, on the man who declared “blessed are the poor,” is being declared by the folks who are determined to cut billions of dollars from programs that keep families from going hungry. The war on Christmas, on the man who overturned the tables of the moneychangers, is being conducted by financial institutions that expect the public to assume the responsibility for their losses on risky investments, while they reap the rewards. The war on Christmas, on the baby who could only find shelter in a stable, is being conducted by immigration policies that have no room for the notion of hospitality. The war on Christmas — on the man who said we will be judged on how we have fed the poor, given drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, and visited those who are sick or in prison — is being conducted by those who would describe those in need as “takers” and those who think it’s a good idea to fill prisons with young men so that private corporations can make a profit.

Frankly, I couldn’t care less whether you wish me a merry Christmas, happy holidays or simply a nice day, so long as it’s done in a spirit of civility. Pipe Bach chorales and Handel’s Messiah out into the streets, and put up a Nativity scene on your lawn. Fine by me. Be my guest.  But don’t put yourself in the role of Mr. Scrooge, loving the fruits of business so much that you care nothing for the poor, and then step out in the public sphere and declare your horror at the neglect and abuse of Christmas. For that is the real war on Christmas, and it looks like Christmas is losing again.

I grew up on the western edge of the Eastern Standard time zone. That means that the sun went down a little later in our corner of southwestern Ohio. I did not appreciate this fact until I came East to go to college in Connecticut. I called my mother that first fall: “The sun goes down at 4:30pm!” Mom sent me a high-spectrum sun lamp. I wrote my papers under it and staved off the worst of the seasonal depression, without escaping it all together.

I moved back to Connecticut two and half years ago. And I love it here. There is something about the fall sky in Connecticut – the clouds are like none I’ve seen anywhere else. This year, the leaves were more than stunning. We love being close to the shore and delight in sea gulls in seemingly random places: downtown, the grocery store parking lot.

And once again, daylight savings time (that odd misnomer) came this year on November 3rd, and now the sun goes down at 4:30pm. Today, December 9th, the official sunset time is 4:22pm. I’ve begun turning on lights and lighting candles before the sun sets. As the darkness settles, I think of us spinning our way toward the darkest night of the year, the winter solstice. I remember that after December 21st, the days will lengthen and the sky will progressively lighten. The sun will return. And though months of winter remain ahead of us, we will welcome the light and turn our faces toward the sun.

A devoted detester of winter, I married a man who loves the snow, loves the cold, the coziness of winter evenings. He has helped me to change my view of these darkest nights of the year. One of his most beloved albums is “December” by George Winston. It and Handel’s “Messiah” are the sound track of our Decembers. Winston’s calm, quiet piano solos warm the winter air and make one wish for a fresh fall of snow (which we just may get tonight). Through the music, I am reminded of the blessings of darkness. I pray that I may not just wait out these dark days, but embrace them, lean into them, cherish them. I pray that I might write and cook and reflect and love my way through December and find the joy therein as the light fades and then returns.

I wish the same for you.

Listen to George Winston’s “December” on YouTube

In 1642, during the British Civil War, Protestant troops of Cromwell’s New Model Army celebrated taking the city by looting the cathedral at Winchester. Troops used the stained glass windows for target practice and showed their disdain for monarchy and Catholic saints by smashing open crypts and pitching the bones through the stained glass windows. Construction on Winchester Cathedral had begun in 1079 on a site where a Christian church had stood since the 600s.

This was the second iconoclastic spasm in England. The first, three hundred years earlier, had been under the direction of Henry VIII. At that time, medieval statues had been smashed and used for building material. Perhaps the most egregious instance occurred at Canterbury Cathedral, where the shrine to Thomas A Beckett, constructed in 1220, was smashed to dust in 1538. The shrine, destination of Chaucer’s pilgrims, had long stood for the supremacy of religion over the state. Henry was having none of that.

The Protestant iconoclastic spirit traveled to the Western Hemisphere with the Pilgrims and Puritans, who built wooden meeting houses without adornment or symbol.

Religions are funny about symbols. Hebrew law forbade graven images. Muslim art is abstract and Muslims get testy about depictions of Mohammed. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches split over the question of icons. Worn out Torahs are buried. Don’t burn the Koran. And Bibles? Search the web on that one. Protestants are all over the map in relation to religious symbols.

First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, where I serve as minister, is a good example of what we might call the ultimate in Protestant protesting. There are no symbols at all in the sanctuary—called in classic humanist fashion an “assembly hall.” Built in 1951 in the International Style of the time, the walls are brick and wood and glass. Cromwell’s New Model Army would find nothing to complain about in the assembly hall. Kings and saints; icons and symbols have all gone out the window. There is even some suspicion of the one image—deliberately left ambitious in the tradition—of Unitarian Universalism, the chalice.

What’s up with religions and symbols? What is it about images and imagination?

It’s easy to forget that for most of human history there were no movies; no TV shows; no photographs. Not even “realistic” art of the sort that developed in the Renaissance. For the most part, realistic representation occurred only in sculpture, a 3D representation.

There is still debate about whether or not audiences ran in terror upon seeing the first motion picture, Lumiere’s “L’arrivee d’un train en gare de La Ciotat,” in 1896. Whatever really happened, the human mind began to change when pictures began to move. Previously, movement had occurred only in reality, dreams, or visions. Now, we see moving images everywhere. What has that done to the human mind?

The image, the symbol, is central to human understanding. The McDonald’s “M” speaks to more people than any other in the world. The Mercedes icon is one of the most often stolen objects in the world. We huddle around glowing screens to watch stories unfold.

Even atheists, in the unadorned walls of an assembly hall, imagine a symbol—even if a negative one—called “god.” John H. Dietrich, a minister at the church I serve and one of the originators of “religious humanism,” said, “The human mind invariably confuses the symbol with the thing symbolized.” The implication: mistrust symbols. Yet, oddly, it is not only the most protesting Protestant who believes this. A Byzantine hymn contains these words: “Free me from symbols, from words, that I may discover the signified.” And Hindu thinkers, in their own forest of symbols, said, neti, neti, “not this, not that.”

We may hurl bones through all the windows of stained glass, yet, somehow, as happened at Winchester Cathedral after the Civil War, the windows will be restored. The citizens of Winchester could not afford to repair the windows to their former glory, so they glued the pieces back together as a hodgepodge, a mosaic. The symbol always comes back.